Читать книгу Inspector Bliss Mysteries 8-Book Bundle - James Hawkins - Страница 17

A storm was brewing at Westchester police station. Superintendent Donaldson had pressed the panic button a little before ten in the morning. Exhausted of ideas, nerve and executive toys he called the Assistant Chief Constable with rising concern about Bliss, the death threat and the goat. Detective Sergeant Patterson, summoned by phone, strolled cockily into the superintendent’s office, coffee cup in hand. “You wanted something, Guv?” he said, with enough political savoir faire to know that indispensability outranks rank, and flopped into a comfortable looking leather armchair.

“Yeah, Pat. There’s still no sign of D.I. Bliss – you’ve no ideas have you?”

“Like I said on the phone, Guv. I ain’t his social secretary.”

No need to be like that, thought Donaldson. “Well, you’d better get the men together in the parade room at eleven for a briefing ... The Assistant Chief’s coming to lead the enquiry,” he added as he picked flakes of chocolate from the groin of his trousers. “Bloody biscuits,” he mumbled. “Well ... what are you waiting for?”

“Thought we were supposed to be searching for Dauntsey’s victim,” grumbled Patterson with no attempt to move, “Not poncing around after Bliss.”

“I don’t give a shit about Dauntsey at the moment,” Donaldson’s voice rose as he stood, snowing crumbs onto the floor. “Everything is on hold until we find D.I. Bliss – do I make myself clear?”

Patterson, seeing himself as unofficial envoy for the world, pushed for more information. “What’s he supposed to have done, Guv?”

“What on earth makes you ask that? The man’s missing for God’s sake – might be murdered for all we know.”

Patterson’s face contorted. “Murdered?” he echoed.

“Why?”

Bliss was anything but dead. In fact, in the charged moments following his revelation about the identity of the body in Doreen’s attic, he found himself widely alert to his surroundings. Previously unnoticed objects now appeared as if through a lens, and he was surprised to find the coffee shoppe walls deep in bric-a-brac: polished horse brasses, gleaming like old gold, hung on black leather straps; shiny copper kettles and silvery samovars with ivory handles filled every niche; a weird collection of papier-mâché masks adorned the wainscotting: white-faced Pierrots; red-nosed clowns; devilishly horned Satans with flaming vermilion hair; grotesque, gruesome and macabre masks; whimsical, fanciful and capricious masks. And, although every mask differed, each facial image was tortured by a pair of eye holes into which, and out of which, came only darkness, and, through which he saw a mirror of Doreen Dauntsey.

Doreen had sunk into a torpor, staring rigidly into the middle distance, trying to see both into the past and future at the same time, while mentally fighting against hideous images of the body in her attic. The intensity of her mental battle spun off brain-waves that disquieted every head in the room; drawing the sour-faced woman in black from her window seat to hover, nosily, unladylike, just six feet from the wheelchair; causing a group of elderly patrons to wrap shawls and summer jackets tightly about them; dragging the spindly waitress back to their table.

“Something wrong with the meringue?” she enquired.

“No, no – it’s fine,” said Bliss, waving her off.

Daphne, peering unselfconsciously into Doreen’s sightless eyes muttered, “I think the old turkey’s snuffed it.”

Samantha put her hand on Doreen’s pulse. “No, she hasn’t, Daphne – don’t exaggerate.”

Daphne, unconvinced, furiously fanned a hand in front of Doreen’s stony face. “Well, she looks fairly dead to me,” she said, measuring death by degrees.

“Be quiet,” hissed Samantha, then softened her tone. “Doreen love. Squeeze my hand if you can hear.”

The spidery fingers tightened a fraction.

“She squeezed,” declared Samantha with relief and Bliss bent over her shoulder, whispering, “It could be a stroke – I’d better get an ambulance.”

Doreen’s thin voice whistled through taut lips. “No. I’ll be alright. Please don’t make a fuss.”

The sinister looking woman snorted, catching everyone’s attention, then returned to her table, her veiled face giving nothing away.

“Maybe she was an undertaker’s scout,” Samantha joked later when she and Bliss were snuggling warmly together on her couch, and, although he laughed, he couldn’t help wondering if the old witch hadn’t had a walkie-talkie linked to a funeral home in her black clutch-bag.

Doreen went back inside her mind: seeing a dapper little Major with a sharp brain and no chin getting married and going to war, and a ragged bundle of bandages coming home – still chinless; asking herself the questions that had tormented her for half a century: So – Just when did you realise the major wasn’t himself? When did you know the pompous little toad hadn’t come back? Was it days; weeks; months or even years?

It wasn’t years. I was still pregnant when he ... when “the thing” came back. It couldn’t have been years.

You weren’t expecting him to come back at all were you? That was your plan, wasn’t it?

No, it wasn’t.

Don’t lie, Doreen.

I’m not.

Bloody liar – you’ve always been a bloody liar.

Have not.

Why did you get expelled from school then? Why did your dad chuck you out of the house then?

“Mrs. Dauntsey – can you hear me?” asked Bliss, on the outside, but the words couldn’t cut through the nagging voice in Doreen’s mind.

No-one would ever have known Jonathon wasn’t Rupert’s son if he hadn’t come back, would they?

He didn’t come back smart-ass. Not in person anyway.

But you didn’t know that at the time did you? You should’ve seen your face when the ambulance rolled up at the front door and you thought Rupert was going to pop out and point at your belly saying, “Whose is that then?”

“Mrs. Dauntsey, Mrs. Dauntsey,” Samantha broke through the haze. “Can you tell us what happened?”

“I was shocked when I saw him,” she said, breaking back into the real world for a second, trying to escape the voice.

Thunderstruck would be more accurate, said the voice, reminding her she would never escape. You spewed your guts up remember; couldn’t bear to look at him for weeks. She remembered, only too well, and her face showed the pain as she thought of the nights she’d lain awake in the cold lonely bed, Jonathon swelling inside her, as she listened to the anguished whimpering of the tormented man in the turret room next door.

“I used to lie awake at night praying for him,” she said, sounding compassionate, her downcast eyes looking for sympathy.

Now say that again with a straight face, sneered the voice.

I did pray for him.

Yeah – prayed he would die; prayed for ways you could bump him off without getting caught; prayed he’d cut his wrist.

That would’ve have been a bit tricky wouldn’t it – with only one arm? Anyway, would it have been so terrible? What was life for him? – trapped inside a useless body; pretending to be someone else; mourning his lost love; stuck in the turret room all day and night – alone most of the time.

“Doreen ... Doreen,” Daphne was nagging at her sleeve. “Doreen, dear. Do you think we should call a doctor?”

“Doctor?” she asked vaguely. “No – why? There’s nothing wrong with me.” Doctors! she swore under her breath – Bloody crooks the lot of ’em. Like Doctor Fitzpatrick, pleading poverty in his leather patched tweed jacket and cloth cap; doing his rounds in a beatup Ford Popular – his gleaming black Bentley reserved for weekends in the city. Doctor Fitzpatrick – long dead now – the only other person to know the truth about the creature in the turreted room.

“The radiographer must have mixed up the pictures, Mrs. Dauntsey ...” the old doctor had said, pouring over the x-rays perplexedly after being called upon to examine the returned hero – expected to certify the extent of his wounds for his pension. But there had been no mistake and he had caught on eventually.

Bliss, his senses alert to the slightest shift in the atmosphere, found himself drawn to a grandfather clock which someone had appliquéd with millions of multicoloured seeds. The tasteless timepiece was wheezing noisily as it wound itself up to deliver the hour, and, under his gaze, it stopped, a tick short of eleven and, at that precise moment, the parade room at the police station jumped to attention.

“At ease,” barked Donaldson, entering with the assistant chief on his shoulder, then he faltered, seeing the measly turnout. “Christ – is this the best we can do?”

“Short notice, Guv,” explained Patterson, failing to mention that he’d not put himself out; that the twenty or so men and women he’d rounded up had, in large part, been swanning around the police station in search of an excuse for swanning around the police station.

“We’ll just have to manage, I suppose,” said Donaldson, going on quickly to explain that their new detective inspector had not spent the night at his hotel and had been missing for the past three hours.

“Probably got lost,” quipped Patterson, fixing his tombstone teeth into a ventriloquist’s smile.

Donaldson, recognising the voice, directed his words at the detective sergeant, thinking – let’s see if you think this is funny. “D.I. Bliss received a death threat yesterday morning,” he began, straight-faced. “And last night someone stole some of his personal property and set fire to it in the car park behind the Mitre Hotel – outside his window – obviously intended as a portent.”

“As a what?” asked Patterson.

“As a warning – to scare the shit out of him,” explained the assistant chief, thinking: Get yourself a dictionary – moron.

Sniggers ran around the room but Donaldson barked, “This ain’t funny.”

D.C. Dowding wasn’t so sure – he’d heard about the goat. “Can I ask what exactly was cremated, Sir?” he said with barely suppressed humour.

“It was a stuffed goat,” admitted Donaldson and got the expected gale of laughter. “O.K.” he shouted angrily. “This ain’t Alabama – it’s not the Klu Klux Klan burning crosses. This is Westchester – nobody is going to run one of our men out of town. I repeat – nobody!”

Patterson, sullen-faced, appeared serious. “It sounds more like a prank to me – kids probably ...”

“Oh for God’s sake, Pat. Haven’t you been listening? I said he received a death threat yesterday morning.”

But Patterson sloughed it off. “I wouldn’t mind a quid for every little punk who’s threatened to put me in a concrete overcoat.”

“Sergeant Patterson,” said the A.C.C. “Have you any idea why D.I. Bliss was transferred here from the Met?”

“Haven’t a clue, Sir,” he replied honestly, despite all the strings he’d pulled to find out.

None of them knew – until Superintendent Donaldson filled them in.

The bizarre grandfather clock, in the Coffee House, summoned enough energy to strike only the first four beats of eleven, and time moved forward for Bliss as a pair of clacking stiletto heels announced the manageress’s approach, shattering the petrified atmosphere. “Is there some sort of problem here?” she demanded, alerted by the waitress and the epidemic of worried expressions infecting her other customers.

Talk about uptight, thought Bliss, appraising the woman’s clenched buttocks, over-strung brassière and tightly permed hair. “There’s no problem,” he said, brushing her off.

“Well – Is madam alright?” she continued, pointedly peering for signs of life in Doreen’s wheelchair.

“Yes,” said Doreen weakly, “I’m alright.”

“She’s just had a bit of a shock,” confided Bliss, leading the woman out of the old lady’s earshot, fearing she was on the verge of asking them to remove Doreen for causing a disturbance. “Her husband’s died,” he added, not untruthfully, and watched the woman scuttle back to the kitchen.

“Maybe you and Daphne should go back to the other table,” he said, turning to Samantha, concerned that Daphne’s presence might be intimidating her old friend.

“I didn’t have to help get her out of the home ...” complained Daphne, her feathers ruffled, but Doreen held up a hand, saying through the tears. “You might as well stay, Daphne. I quite relish the idea that I’m still worth gossiping about.”

“Just keep quiet then,” whispered Bliss to Daphne, “and don’t mention that damn goat again.”

“I didn’t realise at first,” Doreen sniffled. “It wasn’t as though I knew him well.”

“Didn’t realise what?” interrupted Daphne immediately, drawing an angry “shush” from Bliss.

“A nurse came in everyday and did his bandages,” continued Doreen. “His face was such a mess that it never occurred to me.”

“What about his father ... ” Bliss began, then corrected himself, “I mean Rupert’s father – the old Colonel. Didn’t he realise it wasn’t his son?”

“His eyes were bad – chlorine gas in the trenches at Ypres. He died a few months later ... heart attack.” She paused in memory of the proud old man slumped, blue-faced, at the feet of his son’s impersonator – his hands clawing at his chest in rigor.

“I’ll put it down to the gas, Mrs. Dauntsey – shall I?” the wily old doctor had said, ceremoniously taking the stethoscope from around his neck and placing it into his bag in a gesture of finality, while giving her a knowing wink.

“Yes, please, Doctor, if you don’t mind,” she had replied, and Dr. Fitzpatrick’s fraudulently penned death certificate had cost her a thousand pounds, but what was the alternative? “Death by shock.” But who wouldn’t have had a heart attack in the Colonel’s place – learning, simultaneously, that his beloved son was a queer, something of an idiot, and dead? And, to cap it all, discovering the man he’d been nursing as a hero for the past few months was not only an imposter, but was also his son’s lover.

Daphne was catching on. “Do you mean ...”

Samantha touched her arm to quieten her, but Doreen turned to her friend, her eyes wide open. “Yes, Daphne. I was so stupid I didn’t realise I was living with the wrong man. Not that I was living with him in the true sense. He stayed in the turret room most of the time – crying I think, though it was difficult to tell.”

Daphne jumped up excitedly. “So who was he?”

“You met him – the best man at our wedding – sham wedding.”

“Captain David Tippen of the Royal Horse Artillery,” pronounced Bliss sagely, feeling the need to prove he’d done his homework.

Daphne’s face pinched into confusion. “David Tippen – What sham wedding?”

Doreen sank back into memories of her marriage, still flabbergasted to think she had been so gullible – realising she had been so bowled over by a proposal from the Colonel’s son that she never really questioned his motives. But memories of the ceremony itself were murky, everything and everyone appearing through a screen of smoky glass, much as it had at the time – more alcoholic than euphoric. Rupert had made all the arrangements, even choosing her dress – and her hat. “Trust Daphne Lovelace to laugh at my hat,” she remembered saying – but to whom, and when ...?

Rupert had only invited his aide-de-camp, (“Done up like a dog’s dinner,” Daphne had shrieked to her friends afterwards), and his father – the old Colonel. But when he announced that Arnie, the odd-job man, and his wife would be the only witnesses Doreen had dug in her heels, insisting on a “proper wedding,” with a maid of honour and bridesmaids; what was the point of a wedding if it wasn’t to brandish one’s trophy in front of one’s friends? In the end, with less than an hour to spare, she settled for Daphne and a clutch of handmaidens dragged out of the Mitre. “What about your parents?” Rupert had asked, showing some feelings at the last minute. “No,” she had shot back fiercely, knowing they’d find fault with him; knowing they’d voice the same concerns which she’d worked so hard to keep buried. “Why you, Doreen?” her father would question. “Why not some tight-assed little bitch with a plum in her mouth, and a stuck-up mother twittering on about how rationing was playing havoc with her dinner parties? – ‘Haven’t had a decent truffle for absolutely ages; and caviar? Pah – lease, don’t even mention it, my dear.’”

Doreen surfaced with one clear recollection of the ceremony. “I remember the vicar with that stupid sing-song voice,” she said, looking inquisitively at the faces surrounding her as if she was coming around from anaesthetic. “Major Rupert Wellington Dauntsey,” he said. “Do you take this woman – Doreen Mae Mason ...” Her voice and memory dimmed for a few seconds, then she seemed to bounce back to life. “Rupert said, ‘I do,’ but he never did,” she continued forlornly. Then she repeated, “He never did,” as if to remind herself.

Three pairs of eyes forged into hers, demanding an explanation, but she sank back into her own private darkness, leaving them to watch her changing expressions as she wove together images of the wedding night out of a thick blanket of fog: Rupert, an officer and, apparently, a gentleman, in full ceremonial uniform, pouring her yet another champagne; brushing his lips off her cheek; guiding her upstairs and leaving her to marvel at the wonders of an en-suite bathroom, at a time most people still crept to the outhouse in the middle of the night, and Hollywood agents dickered over bathroom clauses in film stars’ contracts.

“Mrs. Dauntsey ...” tried Bliss, concerned that time was running out, but she was already far away, her face warming to the dreamy memory of hot water gushing out of a polished brass tap – unlike her parent’s stinky gas geyser scaring the life out of her every time it belched into life, then pumping squirts of lukewarm water into a tin bath until the meter swallowed the last of the coins.

Doreen had found good reason to forget the wedding ceremony, even at the time, but the joy of instant unlimited hot water was so overwhelming she had lost track of time, turning the tap on and off until she could write her name on the bathroom mirror with her finger. Finally, with the important bits washed and powdered, she staggered into the bedroom and swayed, intoxicated as much by the sight of the richly carved four-poster bed, with heavily embroidered tester, as by the champagne.

With her eyes still closed she allowed herself a cautious smile at the memory of the silky sheets; the eiderdown pillows; the giant wall tapestry depicting a mythical battle, with near naked angels lifting the vanquished from the field – someone’s sanguine concept of a soldierly heaven; and the Chippendale dressing table laden with sweet smelling pomanders, and cut crystal bottles so delicate she was afraid to touch. Then her face clouded as the memory darkened and she saw herself swimming fuzzily against a tide of drowsiness, struggling into the satin nightgown, the one Daphne had hurriedly bought for her as a wedding present, then watching as the bed spun wildly away from her and she crashed, unconscious, to the floor.

“It was quite a honeymoon night,” she laughed drily, rising back to the surface, greedily slurping tea to wash away the rekindled taste of bile which had made her vomit all over the bed in the morning. “I think he put something in my drinks,” she added, recalling how she had struggled to pull herself awake through a porridgy sludge, testing her hooded eyes against the morning sunlight and unfamiliar surroundings, while distorted images of the previous day’s ceremony swam slowly into view. Understanding had came through the fog like the beam of a car’s headlights – a fuzzy glow that suddenly bursts into a blinding flash. “I’m married,” she screeched, and lurched upright in bed only to find her husband, the marriage certificate and his aide-de-camp all gone. In their place was a little man with a pneumatic drill trying to hammer his way out of her skull.

“Married,” she spat and opened her eyes to the realisation that those around her were holding their breath. “Rupert left me alone in that damn place,” she explained. “And I was so woozy in the morning I didn’t know if we had or not ... anyway, until my little visitor came a week later I was sure I was expecting.”

Daphne and Bliss exchanged glances – Daphne with a lopsided “told you Rupert wasn’t the father” smirk.

“Don’t ask,” mouthed Bliss, guessing she was itching to discover the true identity of Jonathon’s father; knowing that just a month or so after Dauntsey’s departure someone must have stood on guard in his place.

“He didn’t want a woman,” Doreen continued, head down in embarrassment, “he only wanted a wife.” Then she lost her composure, simpering in shame with the admission that her husband had preferred to sleep with another man on their wedding night.

Bliss checked his watch, anxiously glancing at the door, wondering who would be first through: the matron, Superintendent Donaldson or a masked man with a machine gun. Feeling a need to speed things up he pieced together what he knew, throwing in a few guesses to fill in the blanks for the benefit of Samantha and Daphne. Explaining how, after the massacre caused by Rupert Dauntsey’s stupidity, it seemed likely that Captain Tippen had carried his mortally wounded lover back from the front; that an exploding grenade had showered bits of body and uniform everywhere; that some medical orderly must have mixed up the dog tags and when the survivor, a lowly backstreet boy, found himself being treated as a major, he was more than happy to go along with the blunder.

“He’d seen the Dauntsey home and the Scottish estate,” explained Bliss. “They were a vast improvement on his own home so he obviously thought: Why go back to be a burden to my mother in a Guildstone hovel? Here I have a private nurse; private doctor; a major’s pension; a major’s family and a major’s inheritance. He knew more about Rupert Dauntsey than Doreen ever knew and, in his own mind, was entitled to the estate far more than she ever was.”

Doreen pulled herself together sufficiently to add. “It was difficult for him to talk, and his face was so ugly that nobody wanted to look closely, so it was quite easy for him to get away with it.”

Daphne stepped in, questioning, “But why go along with it? Why not just throw him out?” Then she gave Bliss a poisonous stare and spat, “Men!”

There had been so many reasons, so many conflicting persuasions and influences, that Doreen froze indecisively as she sounded out the most plausible and least humiliating in her mind.

“It was blackmail,” she said eventually, expecting sympathy, while inwardly debating who had blackmailed whom. “He knew Rupert and me had never consecrated the marriage.”

“Consummated,” suggested Samantha quietly, but Doreen wasn’t in the frame of mind to be corrected and carried on as if she had not heard. ‘As long as I’m alive you’ve nothing to fear,’ Tippen said, when I stuck the x-ray under what was left of his nose. ‘Doctor Fitzpatrick reckons there’s been a mistake,’ I told him. ‘He reckons you ought to have some sort of scar in your leg. Football, he told me. Broke your leg at school, he said. He reckons he set the bone himself, when you were ten, he remembers it like yesterday – said you bawled your eyes out the whole time.’”

But there had been no mistake and Tippen had superciliously rubbed in the hurt by explaining, in uncalled for detail, what fun he and his lover had in arranging the spurious wedding in order to stop tongues wagging in the regiment. “It made me sick,” said Doreen, without elaborating.

“I still don’t see why you didn’t chuck him out,” said Daphne. “Nobody would have believed anything he said, after what he’d done?”

“Tippen had worked that out for himself,” explained Doreen shaking her head. “That’s why he made the will.”

“The will,” not “A will,” mused Bliss, recalling the visit from Law, the solicitor, who had made it clear that neither Jonathon nor the church would benefit from the body in the attic. “Are you saying that Tippen made a will in the name of Rupert Dauntsey?” he asked.

Doreen looked destitute as she nodded. “He left everything belonging to the Major to his own mother and the rest of his family. He called it his life insurance policy. Even gave me a copy as a reminder, telling me that when he died I would lose everything – the house, the estate in Scotland – everything. That’s why I had to pretend he was still alive all those years.”

“That still doesn’t explain the bullet in his head ...” started Bliss, but she burst into tears at the memory of her wasted life, or was it relief that the charade had ended? “What could I do?” she blubbered. “If he’d died and I contested the will I would’ve had to tell them I lived with the wrong bloke for ten years.”

“But, what if you’d said you hadn’t known?” suggested Daphne.

“It wouldn’t make any difference. He had the lawyer write in the will that our marriage was never consecrated.”

Samantha let the malapropism go with a smile, but Bliss’s mind was leafing through something Doreen had said earlier.

The briefing at the police station had broken up with officers fanning out across the city – clueless. Patterson was hanging back, like a kid in school waiting to pluck up courage to rat on a bully.

“Something on your mind, Pat?” enquired Donaldson.

“Sorry, Guv ...” he said, apparently coming to a decision. “No, nothing really,” he equivocated, wiping his expression clean. “I was just trying to think of the best place to start that’s all.”

The Olde Curiosity Coffee House would have been a good place to find Bliss, where the waitress was back at his table – under pressure from the management – the bill already made out. “Will that be everything, Sir?”

“Yes, thanks,” said Bliss as a trio of noisy young mothers, teeming with children, set up camp at the next table and the chaos of everyday life resumed as the women struggled with monumental decisions: cappuccino or café latte; skim milk or cream; chocolate or cinnamon topping; orange or apple juice for the bigger kids; breasts or bottles for the infants.

What must Daphne be thinking? he wondered, trying to read her mind as she eyed the mothers with their babies, realising that at roughly the same age she had parachuted into the teeth of war. Wasn’t she envious of the mothers, whose carefree domestic existence would never be ripped apart by the horrors of war or Parisian artists; whose bicycles would never be machine-gunned in the street; whose babies would never be murdered. But her wide open smile hid no angst – simple acquiescence, he guessed. She was happy for the mothers, and resigned to the fact that she’d had her chance, it was written all over her face: “I didn’t deserve another baby – I let someone break the one I had.”

Watching Daphne, Bliss suddenly saw Doreen Dauntsey in a different light. She’d had a child, no-one had robbed her of that, and, rightfully or wrongfully she’d lived a fairly cushy life. Compassion for her predicament waned still further with the realisation that, in her own way, she had been no less mercenary than the Major who’d suckered her into a bogus marriage, or the man who’d taken his place in the house, if not in his bed. And there was something else: “Mrs. Dauntsey,” he said, turning coolly toward her. “You said earlier that the doctor had examined Tippen for the army pension, that was how he discovered the fraud ...” He paused, watching the worry lines crease her forehead. “It was fraud – claiming a major’s pension to which he wasn’t entitled. Would you agree?”

Doreen was slow to respond, so Samantha helped her out. “Do you see what Inspector Bliss is getting at Mrs. Dauntsey? If Tippen was defrauding the government out of a pension, you’d have a good case for saying he defrauded you out of your inheritance as well.”

Samantha was wrong – very wrong. Bliss knew it and so did Doreen, though neither of them let on – choosing silence instead. In the end he prodded her again. “Mrs. Dauntsey ... I said, that would be fraud, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

Samantha sensing something in the harshness of his tone gave Bliss a puzzled look.

“I think Mrs. Dauntsey has something to tell us,” said Bliss, leaving Doreen hanging.

“Oh. I suppose you’ll find out soon enough,” Doreen spluttered. “I was the one getting the Major’s war pension not Tippen. He couldn’t sign his name and they was very good at the post office – they knew he couldn’t get out of the house, so all I had to do was scratch a cross on the form and they’d give me his pension.”

“Didn’t anyone ever check up – ever want to see him?” asked Bliss.

“No,” she shook her head. “Nobody wanted to see him.”

Bliss whistled. “So you were collecting Major Dauntsey’s pension for what ... ten years?”

The old grandfather clock had stopped completely, halting time in the Coffee House. Even the children at the next table seemed soporific under the weight of silent anticipation. Then Doreen Dauntsey broke down. “More than fifty years,” she blubbered. “I knew I shouldn’t have – I knew it were wrong, but I had to pay the bills.”

Those damn bills, she thought to herself, sniffling into a handkerchief – never enough money for the bills, especially with old Doctor Fitzpatrick having his hand permanently in her purse almost until the day he’d died. But what choice did she have? Then there was the cost of bringing up Jonathon in a manner befitting the supposed son of a major; the death duties when the old Colonel died; in addition to the upkeep and taxes on the house. The income from the Scottish estate had helped but she had still been forced to sell everything movable over the years. Only the land and houses remained, still registered in Rupert Dauntsey’s name, and impossible to sell or mortgage while he was still alive. And, legally, he was still alive.

“The pension was Tippen’s idea,” Doreen averred when she’d calmed down. “He said we’d have to claim the Major’s pension or someone would start asking awkward questions. I said I wouldn’t do it, but ... ” Her eyes glazed again, this time with a memory so horrific that in fifty years it had never dimmed, even for a day: Tippen, in the turret room, viciously grabbing her by the throat with the three clawed fingers of his left hand, pulling her to within an inch of his grotesque face, then slobbering with a foetid spray of bad breath and saliva as he spat, “As long as we both keep quiet nobody will ever know.” Her face screwed in awful memory of the moment saying, simply, “He made me do it.”

“But he forged the Major’s signature on the will,” said Samantha. “If you had gone to the authorities they would have soon discovered who he was and the will would have been null and void.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But it would still have left me penniless. Rupert never changed his will when we married. He didn’t have time, I told myself; didn’t want to was more like it. Anyway, his will left everything to the church because he had no other relatives. I still wouldn’t have got anything.”

No wonder the vicar was thinking he might see a new roof, thought Bliss, wondering why the lawyer had accepted Tippen’s false signature if he had the previous will to compare it against. Then it dawned on him – Tippen alias Dauntsey didn’t have a right hand. He could have scribbled anything with his left, mumbling, “This won’t look anything like my previous signature.”

“I decided the best thing to do was to pretend Rupert was alive as long as possible and just keep my mouth shut,” Doreen continued, pulling herself together. “I couldn’t think what else to do, and I thought it would all be over when Tippen died.”

“But it wasn’t?” piped up Daphne, seeming to surface from nowhere and stunning them with her understanding. “I bet it was worse.”

Doreen nodded, sobbing. “I suppose in one way or another we’re all prisoners of our dead,” she said with remarkable insight. “When he was alive he had no voice. He was my prisoner and I was his. One word from either of us and we would all be out on the street: him, me and Jonathon. But once he was dead he held all the cards: His mother would get the Major’s house and estate, and the pension would stop. I thought once he was dead I would be free, but he never let me go.”

A sudden flurry at the front door caught Bliss’s eye and he turned in time to see the matron and Jonathon Dauntsey barging in.

“Oh shit,” he muttered.

“There she is,” shouted Jonathon as if he’d spotted a fleeing prisoner.

“Inspector?” said Doreen, grabbing his arm as if she wanted to make a dying declaration. “The dead are the lucky ones – they never have to explain.”

“Leave my mother alone,” screeched Jonathon, advancing on them.

Then Doreen had her final say, “He only really makes such a fuss of me because he knows when I’m gone he’ll have to live with himself.”

“Mother are you alright? Has he hurt you?” said Jonathon, turning a dozen pairs of accusing eyes in Bliss’s direction.

Daphne turned on Jonathon with such ferocity Bliss wondered if she might kick him. “Don’t be so stupid. Of course nobody’s hurt her. What rubbish – I just took my old friend for a walk and a nice cup of tea. Isn’t that right, Doreen?”

“Yes. And a meringue ...”

“You kidnapped her,” spat the matron, catching up to Jonathon. “And you,” she spun on Bliss. “You were in on this. I shall report you to the Chief Constable. This is a disgraceful way to treat a sick old lady. I’m taking her back to the home this instant.”

“I thought we were the only ones allowed to take prisoners.”

“How dare you – she’s not a prisoner.”

“She could be,” he retorted. “I have sufficient evidence to send her to prison for the rest of her life.”

Something in the sincerity of Bliss’s tone brought the matron up short, then she shook the notion aside. “I don’t believe it.”

“Are you suggesting we disregard the truth in the interest of believability, Matron?” he asked, putting on a Jonathon Dauntsey attitude, but the manageress intervened, pounding her way back across the room, demanding they should leave immediately, threatening to call the police.

Daphne started to open her mouth: “We are the police” on the tip of her tongue, but Bliss got to her in time and caught her arm. “Leave it, Daphne,” he said, not wanting to attract any more attention, knowing that Donaldson would already have an all-units warning out for him.

“Come along then, my dear,” said the matron, in baby-talk, wrestling the wheelchair from Daphne. “It’s your dinner time. The cook made some tasty stewed beef and rice pudding.”

“Just one question, Jonathon,” said Bliss, standing in front of the man to block his exit. “When I told you we’d found your father’s body, you said, ‘I doubt that very much, Inspector.’ Why?”

Jonathon’s face puzzled as if asking, “Is this another trick question?” But Doreen was quick to respond, “Come along, Jonathon. I’ve told the inspector everything he needs to know.” Then, giving the matron a nod to push, she added. “Thank you for the tea and the meringue, Inspector,” as if nothing else had happened.

“She hasn’t changed a bit,” said Daphne as the three of them watched Doreen disappearing through the front door. “Still as flighty as ever.”

“Possibly,” said Bliss. “But I still don’t know who is, or was, Jonathon’s father. And I’m still not sure who blew Tippen’s brains out.”